Pide: Traditional Turkish Comfort Food

Along the streets of Istanbul you will see the occasional fast food establishment. But for the most part, Turkish people still prefer homemade food. Then again, Turkish food is so richly diverse, combining the best elements of Mediterranean, Balkan, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Armenian cuisines, there’s no reason to settle for a tasteless, mass-produced burger when you can have something just as simple to eat, but much more delicious. 

Pide is a good example of this. These traditional flatbread pizzas are boat-shaped and topped with cheese and meat and vegetables in almost limitless combinations and cooked in a very hot clay or stone oven. 

At Sultan Saray, Pide is a true comfort food, something to slice and share with friends and family. It can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. 

Design Your Own Pide

For children,  who can be infamously picky, cheese is probably the easiest choice. This is made with three types of cheese: Mozzarella, white cheese and Kashkaval.

From there you can add spinach or crumbled, spiced lamb, or sujuc, which is a dry and spicy sausage made from ground beef. 

The crust of our Pide is a soft and chewy flatbread, sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Before a recent discover, the world’s oldest bread –9100 years old!– had been located at an ancient site in Turkey. Though archaeologists recently found a pita-like flatbread in Jordan that was over 14,000 years old.

Half and Half

Pide can be made cheese on one side and Zaatar or meat or chicken on the other. If you haven’t already, try Muhammara, a red pepper paste from Aleppo, Syria that complements the other toppings so well.

Don’t let the red pepper scare you, The Muhammara is more smokey and savory than it is spicy. 

Sultan Saray serves Pide with a plate of fresh mint, cucumber, tomatoes and olives. Unless you order the desert Pide, which is topped with chocolate, bananas, and honey. 

Accompany your choice of this Turkish pizza with a fresh watermelon juice or hot tea. You can’t go wrong with any of the customer favorites at Sultan Saray.